Exposed: The Long, Cruel Road to the SlaughterhouseFrom all-creatures.orgAnimal Rights ArticlesMoo-ving people toward compassionate living

Exposed: The Long, Cruel Road to the Slaughterhouse

By Emily Dugan

Millions of animals are suffering unnecessarily at the hands of meat traders
by enduring cruel, drawn-out journeys across the world to be slaughtered on
arrival.

The alarming evidence of their suffering has been revealed after a secret
investigation by 10 major animal charities, including the RSCPA, Compassion
in World Farming and the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA).
In shocking footage, animals including horses, pigs, sheep and chickens are
seen being transported thousands of miles across the world, when they could
as easily be carried as meat.

Thousands of animals die en route from disease, heat exhaustion, hunger
and stress. The others escape the intolerable conditions only to confront,
immediately, the butcher's knife.

The video is the product of the Handle With Care coalition, which has
united animal charities to campaign against the abhorrent practice. The
coalition, which is lobbying for change in the countries concerned, unveiled
an international campaign yesterday in countries including Brazil,
Australia, the US, Spain and Italy.

Across the world, more than a billion live animals are transported every
week, many over long distances. The video reveals the horror of five
particularly gruesome journeys. Australia, the world's largest exporter of
live animals, sends more than four million live sheep every year to the
Middle East. Shipped in cramped, poorly lit dens, the journey takes 32 days.
Many of the animals die of suffocation before encountering the
slaughterhouse weeks later.

Those sheep that do arrive are fattened before being killed in accordance
with Halal butchery laws. Eighty per cent of Australia's abattoirs are Halal-certified,
raising the question of why they could not be slaughtered in Australia and
transported frozen.

Many live exports are undertaken to make the fraudulent claim that the
animals are home-reared. In Spain, thousands of horses are illegally crammed
into lorries for a sweltering 46-hour journey to Italy. Canadian pigs, in
conditions just as obscene, are condemned to a 4,500-mile journey by land
and sea to Hawaii, so that, when slaughtered, their carcasses can be sold as
"Island Produced Pork". For nine days, hundreds of pigs are crammed together
in the dark, standing in their own excrement. Exhausted and hungry, they
become ill, vomiting from motion sickness and waiting for long periods
without food.

Compassion in World Farming's chief executive, Philip Lymbery, said: "The
cruelty these animals endure is completely unacceptable in the 21st century.
This trade is one in which millions of animals suffer cruel and unnecessary
journeys each year. It must stop."

Despite EU regulations which should protect the animals on the filmed
routes, the horses are denied adequate food and water, and endure
temperatures of up to 40C.

Speaking on behalf of the International League for the Protection of
Horses, Jo White said: "Long distance transport for slaughter is the biggest
single abuse of horses in Europe, with around 100,000 involved in the trade.
The ILPH is committed to ending this unnecessary suffering and with the
review of EU legislation next year, urges the public to demonstrate its
objection to this inhumane trade as a matter or urgency."

Rules on the minimum standards of care for the transit of live animals
are flouted regularly, with many in such cramped conditions that they have
no room to lie down. In Europe alone, some six million animals are taken on
long journeys of up to 70 hours, which often cause extensive suffering.

No investigation is usually conducted into a live export unless more than
2 per cent of these animals die in transit; those in the industry say that 1
per cent will die on their journey – equivalent to about 40,000 sheep dying
in inhumane conditions each year.

Campaigners say that humans could also be at risk from the live shipping
as diseases such as bird flu are spread more easily. Britain's trade in live
animal exports is not on the scale of countries such as Australia, but the
coalition wants the practice stopped altogether. In this campaign, the
coalition hopes to emulate the success of the veal calf campaign of the
1990s, which saw the export of live calves banned in 1996. One woman even
gave her life to the cause as she attempted to stop a cattle lorry at
Coventry airport.

But after a decade of keeping the trade at bay, pressure from the farming
industry prevailed. Traffic resumed in 2006 when the EU lifted the ban after
a downturn in the number of BSE cases in the UK.

Each year, 80,000 live sheep and lambs are taken from Britain to
continental Europe, and campaigners believe they could be dealt with more
humanely by being slaughtered before transportation. David Bowles of the
RSPCA said: "We are urging everyone to support this campaign so that we can
stop this cruel and unnecessary trade."

'Live animals were living on top of carcasses'

An undercover Compassion in World Farming investigator tells of seeing
zebu cattle arrive in Beirut on a ship from Brazil:

"When I boarded the ship the first thing that hit me was the smell. Even
before it had docked you could smell it, a combination of ammonia from the
stale excrement, the sweat of the packed cattle, and diesel from the ship.

"I didn't have to look hard to see the effect of this. I saw two cows
lying dead as soon as I got on board; the crew had been unable to get them
out from among the live animals, who were living virtually on top of their
carcasses. I'm not a vet, but it looked like the impact of that journey had
been too much for them.

"The crew said there were 2,500 cattle on board, and you had animals
falling down that couldn't get up again because they were struggling to find
the space to stretch their legs. It was so confined they were constantly
pushing against each other, even while the ship was stationary. I dread to
think what it would have been like when the ship was moving. It was a very
stressful environment; the noise of the engines and the dark made it
unbearable for me being down there for just a few hours, but I can't imagine
what it was like for the animals on that 17-day journey. In Lebanon, the
temperature was in the high 30s, but in the metal hold of a confined ship it
was unbearable.

"Because these were zebu from Brazil, they had lived wild on expansive
ranches. So when they were moved on to trucks and ships, they didn't
understand their environment. They bashed against the confines of the lorry
in an attempt to find their way out. And, in an effort to keep them as
stationary as possible, the traders had packed them in so closely they could
hardly move.

"There was no provision made at all for the fact that what they were
dealing with was a living thing, not an inanimate object. It was the same
with the ship. The space they were kept in on this three-week trip was
simply a metal floor with little or no surface to provide grip; they were
keeping wild animals in what was basically a tin.

"And at the end of this brutal process, the very reason for their live
transportation seemed defunct, as they were slaughtered in front of each
other, a practice not considered Halal by the experts I consulted.

"As we stood there filming, all I could think was, 'This is so
unnecessary and so cruel'."

Fair Use Notice: This document may contain copyrighted
material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright
owners. We believe that this not-for-profit,
educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted
material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law). If you
wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go
beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.